One of the biggest benefits of writing about videogames professionally is that by combining your hobby with your work you're able to satisfy your research needs while simultaneously enjoying yourself, killing two birds with one proverbial stone. In my case, I've been able to spend hundreds of hours playing World of Warcraft over the past few years without feeling too guilty about it.

I've quit for several months at a time, usually to dabble in another MMO, yet always come back to experience the lastest WoW content update or expansion. In preparation for the 3.1 patch and Secrets of Ulduar, I decided that I wanted to join a raiding guild that was all about progression, tackling the toughest bosses and pushing themselves to experience all the game had to offer. Lots of game journalists play WoW here and there, but very few are in successful raiding guilds that manage to clear content.

I limited myself to a certain degree, knowing that holding down a full-time job and maintaining my real-life relationships would keep me from being in an uber-hardcore guild like Ensidia, the sponsored entity that rose from the ashes of SK-Gaming and Nihilum. My paycheck would be the only pro-gaming sponsorship I'd be receiving anytime soon, and that's compensation for turning phrases, not my hardcore skills.

To get into a good raiding guild as a damage class, it's important to generate high DPS. How high? Over 9000!

Knowing that I had to limit my play time, I would want a guild that only got together a limited number of nights a week, and with an evening schedule so that I would have plenty of time to get home, have dinner, and spend some time with my wife before raids. I previously wrote about raiding with a late-night guild of Australians, but that was absolute murder on my sleep schedule. It's tough to find time to nap at your desk when your copy editor is breathing down your neck.

So I narrowed my search to my existing server, Destromath, and did a fair amount of research on what my options were on sites like WoWJutsu and WoWProgress. I wanted a guild near the top, but not one that would require more of a time investment than I was ready to put in.

A couple guilds came up, but one in particular struck me as a great fit: Fantastic Feel. Any guild with a Hello Kitty/Badtz Maru motif on their website scores big points in my book, and their polls were funnier than most I've seen on rival websites. I submitted an application, and made no bones about what I was after:

"I write about games for a living, often WoW, so I need to be part of a good guild that will be running Ulduar content when it launches. Your guild has the progression and the raid times that I'm looking for."